A soft opening to the week

No crash landings, please / Issue 1,349

Oh, hi friends!

Emotions never last as long as you think they should. Neither do moments. Or vacations. You feel, you experience, you rest, and then off you go, on to the next. 

Mondays feel like Mondays because we've just been in a place — Saturday, Sunday — away from our weekday routines and work, possibly even slightly removed from the grind. And post-holiday Mondays, well, those are the most Monday Mondays of all. Because of the extra days away but also because where we were — with family, friends, on solo trips, at the pie table, etc. — was even more far removed from our norm. 

So here we are, crash-landing on this particular Monday morning.

I caught a bunch of brain ideas in the sieve that is my Notes app last night. "Look at plants, plan podcast schedule, make book giveaway, create Google Doc of all my projects and what stage they’re in and when I last worked on them and maybe even goals for them, post those two Instagrams, poss show idea - fog?, send thank you, respond to Buy Nothing folks…" 

I would go on but these exist only on my little planet of importance. You have your own planets.

So here we are, crash-landing — actually, no, let's not.

So here we are, softly settling into this particular Monday morning. 

Think about your own planet of importance.

And let's revisit the basic principles, rules, and stipulations that comprise this newsletter (kidding, they're just the things I repeat a lot).

• Get it all out of your brain

• Choose one thing

• Finish it

• Choose another

The only way out is through. 

And the only way through is simple.

Go slowly.

Inch by inch.

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And if you weren't in your inbox last week, here are my newsletters from Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, featuring readers' answers to the sentence: "This year, I'm thankful I finally decided to…" 

• Part One

• Part Two

• Part Three (with five new additions added over the weekend!)

These are my favorite posts of the year.